He Built This City
AM New York’s piece this morning assessing Mike Bloomberg’s legacy is one of the first of many, many articles that are sure to come as the mayor enters the twilight of his term. The article positions Mayor Mike as a great post-9/11 rebuilder who’s played a big role in luring tourists, spurring development and making…
AM New York’s piece this morning assessing Mike Bloomberg’s legacy is one of the first of many, many articles that are sure to come as the mayor enters the twilight of his term. The article positions Mayor Mike as a great post-9/11 rebuilder who’s played a big role in luring tourists, spurring development and making formerly undesirable neighborhoods hot. “Places like Red Hook that were once a no-man’s land are hipster havens, and Brooklyn is now a center for culture and art for the whole country,” says Mitchell Moss, a professor of history at New York University and adviser to the mayor’s first campaign. “Whoever thought people would want to live on the Gowanus.” The article notes that the Bloomberg administration’s aggressive rezoning agenda (“one out of every six square feet in the city” has been rezoned) and drive to incentivize development on NYC’s waterfront has altered the lay of the land, and New York has much more of a “luxury” sheen than it did six years ago. The cost of all this is high, according to critics who say the city has become too expensive for the working- and middle-class and resulted in inorganic changes. “There has been a pinching of people’s sense of place, and a destruction of community identity,” says Brad Lander, director of the Pratt Center for Community Development. “They have accelerated the transformation of this place from a manufacturing city to a condo and office tower city, but a lot of people don’t feel invested in that growth.”
Bloomberg Reshapes City, Despite High-Profile Setbacks [AM New York]
Photo by CarbonNYC.
Benson, look up the numbers year by year. You can find them here:
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/nycrime.htm
Else, see wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Dinkins
“He was hurt by the perception that crime was out of control during his administration, although crime actually declined during the last 36 months of his four-year term, ending a 30 year upward spiral and initiating a trend of falling rates that continued well beyond his term.[1][2] Dinkins also initiated a hiring program that expanded the police department nearly 25%.”
IOW, it took him a year to get his new police commish, and the new community police policy going. Then the decline started. The decline has continued until this day. But the decline started under Dinkins. If you can’t accept the facts, that makes you a racist loser. You were probably in Idaho while Dinkins was mayor, else you weren’t even born.
To all the Freakonomic’s advocates;
Can someone explain how Chicago, which has ademogrpahic make-up similiar to New York’s, and a similiar “situation” (older dense city, formerly industrial and now centered on the service sector) has almost double the crime rate?
Anyone ever think that leadership can make a difference?
Benson
If we all agree easy access to abortion lowered crime as is described in Freakanomics, imagine what would happen if it was REQUIRED for everyone with subnormal intelligence and/or a criminal record?
I’d hate to think that Brownstoner readers are advocating – *gasp* – eugenics!
Who are you Benson to tell people what they should blog about here. Brownstoner is fair game for anything from war to strollers. But oh, I forgot, you just said “let’s have more civil rights abuse”. We see where you are coming from. I wonder if you would say that if your civil rights were being abused. BTW, the city paid out more money in lawsuits to victims of Police misconduct under Guiliani than at any other time. I agree with 2:43 and daveinbedsty’s reference to “Freakonomics” which actually details some of what 2:43 stated. You should read it and the UCR – Put out by the FBI detailing crime and crime trends in America, so that you can get your facts straight.
Denton;
Nice try, but it won’t work.
Giuliani was responsible for all of 1995. He started January, 1995. Why don’t you compare 1994 (Dinkin’s last complete year), with 1995 (Giuliani’s first complete year)?
Well, I can see where you’re going: time to play the race card, it it, Denton? I guess that when you can’t win the debate on the facts, you can always use that card as a last resort. It’s what all the losers do in these types of situations.
Benson
Bloomberg is the greatest mayor the city ever had.
Guiliani is an asshole. Thank goodness the rest of the country figured that out.
Dinkins was a decent man and a decent mayor. Everyone who claims crime was at an ‘all-time high’ under Dinkins needs to check their statistics. If we’re giving mayors credit for everything including societal changes, it should be noted that crime, and especially the murder rate, started its fall under Dinkins.
It continued under the next two, but it started during the Dinkins admin.
The murder rate in 1990, the first year Dinkins served in office, was 2262. The murder rate in 1995, the first year of the Ghouliani, was 1181.
I always wondered why Dinkins gets dumped on in spite of his success in reducing the crime rate. I guess there’s an obvious reason.
BTW, statistics here…
http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statistics/cscity.pdf
2.43 PM;
It seems to me that you are more interested in making points about national political trends than in analyzing what happened in NYC.
As I stated in my previous post, the murder rate tripled under Lindsay’s watch, which was well before Iran-Contra, Noriega and all the other national political events that you mentioned in your post.
You are also full of it with regard to the reasons for the crime decrease. As someone pointed out, NY’s startling decrease in crime was an anomaly at the time, when you compare it to the national trends, as well as what was happening in other big cities.
As for Dinkins: the man was far worse than just a “not efficient manager”. This is the man who let a riot run unabated for three days in Crown Heights. He is the man who let a group of racist thugs set up a “demonstration” in front of the Korean green grocer on Church Ave, continually threatening the proprietor’s life in broad daylight. He’s the man who ran to comfort a drug dealer’s mother when he was killed in an armed struggle with a police officer (who was exonerated), yet could not find the time to comfort the parents of a tourist from Utah who died in trying to stop a mugging on the subway.
If you think that Giuliani abused civil rights in restoring some semblance of order in this city, after the reign of such an incompetent mayor like Dinkins, then I say “let’s have more civil rights abuse”.
Please stick to posting on the political blogs. If you want to blog about NYC, then get the facts straight.
Benson
What 12:14 said. He’s a wealthy dictator who disdains anyone who doesn’t happen to agree with his viewpoints. He’s full of crap.
What 12:14 said. He’s a wealthy dictator who disdains anyone who doesn’t happen to agree with his viewpoints. He’s full of crap.